Intercultural Readiness: Four Competences for Working across Cultures

It can be a challenge for global organizations to ensure that their increasingly multicultural workforce is working and communicating effectively across different cultures. Drawing on research from over 30,000 individuals from all over the world, Intercultural Readiness presents a model for assessing the four key competencies that employees must develop in order to work effectively across different cultures; Intercultural Sensitivity, Intercultural Communication, Building Commitment and Managing Uncertainty. One of the first scientifically sound intercultural assessment tools, the Intercultural Readiness Check (IRC) helps organizations discover how well they work across cultures and in what areas their teams needed better training or support.

Combining their practical experience as intercultural management consultants with a decade of research into how to improve team-working and communication, the authors present practical strategies for how to develop these competencies and provide useful insights into the broader landscape of intercultural management.

About the Author

Ursula Brinkmann, Ph.D., and Oscar van Weerdenburg are Managing Directors of the international consulting firm Intercultural Business Improvement. Together they developed the Intercultural Readiness Check, one of the world's leading cultural assessment tools, which is licensed by companies, HR professionals and universities around the world.

Ursula Brinkmann worked with the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen before co-founding Intercultural Business Improvement. She combines her work as intercultural coach and cross-cultural psychologist to ensure that the Intercultural Readiness Check keeps bringing value to clients.

As an intercultural consultant for executive and management intercultural programmes, Oscar van Weerdenburg works with private, corporate and company clients of Intercultural Business Improvement, and with the company's licensees in five continents. He has held over a 1,000 workshops and presentations multinational organisations on successfully managing cultural differences, and is one of the most frequently invited guest speakers on cultural issues at international corporate conferences.